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THE IVORY SERIES 


Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents 


AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell 
Editor of " Life " 

IA. A Love Story. By Q 
[Arthur T. Quiller-Couch] 

THE SUICIDE CLUB 

By Robert Louis Stevenson 

IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER 
By E. W. Hornung 

A MASTER SPIRIT 

By Harriet Prescott Spofford 

MADAME DELPHINE 
By George W. Cable 

ONE OF THE VISCONTI 
By Eva Wilder Brodhead 

A BOOK OF MARTYRS 
By Cornelia Atwood Pratt 

A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH 
By E. W. Hornung 

THE MAN WHO WINS 
By Robert Herrick 

AN INHERITANCE 

By Harriet Prescott Spofford 


Other Volumes to be announced 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


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The Man Who Wins 


by ; 

ROBERT HERRICK 



CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK, 1897 



Copyright, 1897, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANt 
NEW YORK 


C < 
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TO 

H. H. 




































































































THE MAN WHO WINS 


i 

The Four Corners in Middleton made a 
pleasant drive from the university town of 
Camberton. Many a time in the history of 
the house a party of young fellows had driven 
over the old turnpike that started where the 
arsenal used to stand in the sacred quarter of 
Camberton, and as the evening sun gilded 
the low, fresh-water marshes beyond Spring 
Pond, would trot on toward the rolling hills 
of Middleton. After dinner, or a dance, 
or, perhaps, mere chat over a late supper, 
they rode away at midnight singing as they 
whipped up their sleepy nags and otherwise 
disturbing the decorum of night in Middle- 


2 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


ton. Or, maybe, routed out early on a 
frosty October morning, after lighting pipes 
and a word with the stable-boy, they would 
snuggle into overcoats and spin away over 
the hard roads where the night frost still lay 
on the caked dust in the hollows like a crust 
of milk. In crossing the meadows the autumn 
sun swung into their faces, a comfortable sol- 
ace on a morning drive, exciting them for- 
ward toward Camberton that they might 
report in the little stucco chapel while the 
tinny college bell was still harshly calling to 
prayer. 

The Ellwells had kept the old Four Cor- 
ners in Middleton long after the family had 
moved out into the wider world of Bos- 
ton, and from farming and the ministry had 
entered the spheres of commerce and money- 
owning. In the time of old Roper Ellwell 
the Four Corners had been the parsonage for 
Middleton, and there first the Rev. Roper 
Ellwell had stirred the placid waters of meet- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


3 


ing-house faith until something like a primi- 
tive revival had spread into neighboring 
parishes. His wife, a learned woman, had 
managed half a dozen young men who were 
preparing their Greek and Latin for Cam- 
berton. Those were the homely and kindly 
days of the Four Corners. 

Then Roper Ellwell was called by the 
Second Church, in Boston, to be their pastor. 
This was the beginning of the Ellwell family 
in the good society of New England. The 
pastor’s eloquence waxed into books that are 
found to-day on the shelves of the Harvard 
Library, with the University book-plate re- 
cording their gift by the author; also in black- 
cloth bindings, admirably printed, going to 
auction from some private library formed by 
a parishioner of the noted divine. When 
he became old in service, the congregation, 
now rich and fashionable, added to his 
ministrations the vigor of a younger man. 
Vet Roper Ellwell, on fine Sundays, still 


4 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


fired one of his former discourses from the 
lofty pulpit of his church. As these days 
grew rarer, the old pastor divided his time 
between his son’s house on Beacon Street 
and the Four Corners. 

Mark Ellwell was, as he should be, his 
father’s son with the leaven of a newer 
world which led him into business instead of 
the ministry. But a fair product of Camber- 
ton, and a man well known and liked in 
Boston, where he was a merchant, when that 
term did not cover shop-keeping or gam- 
bling. He made a solid fortune in wool ; 
built a house just beyond Charles Street 
on Beacon Street ; was a member of two 
good clubs, and a deacon in his father’s 
church. 

In these days the Four Corners was used 
chiefly in the autumn months, and as a play- 
house for the feeble pastor. Mark Ellwell 
built a summer home in Nahant. 

. . There .was one son who. grew up— John. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 5 

This Ellwell was sent to Camberton in due 
time, where he broke the family tradition by 
living a licentious life. He was kept in the 
university for two years, from respect to his 
family, in spite of his drunkenness and idle- 
ness. When the war broke out — John was 
then in his third year at Camberton — the 
wilder blood at the university found its field. 
Young Ellwell shirked his chance ; while his 
mates were enlisting and leaving college, he 
slunk away in little sprees, pleading weak 
health. Mark Ellwell, shamed and mortified, 
would have horsewhipped his son into the 
ranks, but the mother defended the weak- 
ling. 

One day young Ellwell announced his 
marriage to a Salem girl whom he had met 
the week before. His father gave him a 
house ; as he chose to be a broker, his father 
started him with his own credit. A few 
years later, when the war was over and John 
Ellwell was succeeding in the general tide of 


6 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


success, established with a family and three 
young children, all seemed well. Now the 
Four Corners was rarely visited. The ve- 
randas broke down ; grass and hardy roses 
grew into the cracks where the clap-boards 
had started. The Ellwells, father and son, 
were fashionable people ; the family had de- 
veloped. 

Early in the seventies there came rumors 
of young Ellwell’s disgrace in the Tremont 
Club. He was detected cheating at play, 
and left the club, of which Mark Ellwell was 
vice-president. John Ellwell was a large, 
florid man, with the fine features of the good 
New England pastor, a slightly Roman nose, 
and a gouty tendency in his walk. He was 
the flourishing broker, of the kind who 
worked on nerve, who was never sober after 
three in the afternoon, and having begun to 
drink at ten was uncertain after twelve. He 
knew a side of business life that his father 
had never seen; he associated with men 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


7 


whom the stiff Mark would have disdained 
to recognize. But his reputation for clever- 
ness carried him on in spite of the club affair 
until . 

One day, after a spree, he went on the 
Board wild and flurried. What he did he 
could never remember, but when the set- 
tlement for that day’s transactions was made 
he was ruined. The Board gave him a week 
to find the necessary funds and pay his debts. 
His father settled the affair, opened the Four 
Corners for his family, sold his own house 
on Beacon Street, and taking his two daugh- 
ters, who had never married, sailed for Eu- 
rope. That was the end of the Ellwells 
in old Boston. Mark Ell well never came 
back. 

“ The old man is done with me.” That 
had been John’s comment to his wife. And 
well might Mark Ellwell be done with him ; 
there was not much left for another clearing 
up. There were the Four Corners, and his 


8 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


seat in the Board, and then — beggary. So 
in the third generation the Ellwells estab- 
lished themselves once more in Middleton 
at the Four Corners. 


II 

Good people, people of fortunes nicely- 
won and carefully transmitted, well-known 
people, in short the members of society who 
make life an important affair to be honora- 
bly transacted in due reverence for their own. 
reputation and the opinion of their neighbors, 
had nothing more to do with the family. 
They were blotted out of the blue book of 
Boston and never ventured beyond the 
shady walks of the Common on the Beacon 
Street side. In the other world, about the 
exchange, in the bar-rooms and restaurants 
of the downtown hotels, John Ellwell still 
led a comfortable life. The Board liked 
him. His transactions never again assumed 
large proportions, but in the way of little 


9 


IO 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


things he did a brisk business and went his 
old, corrupt, uncertain path. 

The old house at Middleton was pulled 
to pieces and made fit for a gentleman’s 
family, with a comfortable dining-room and 
broad-bayed windows, fine mahogany from 
the Beacon Street house, and an opulent 
cellar. Wide verandas were run about the 
house again, giving delightful vine-cov- 
ered nooks for talk and sewing in the hazy, 
heated summer days. The lawn was nicely 
shaved and watered ; the drive that led 
through the orchard to the cross-roads 
which gave the name to the place was 
weeded and gravelled. A new stable was 
put up behind, and furnished with three 
horses, some smart little carts, besides a close 
carriage for rainy days. The exile was 
made tolerable — for the sake of the children. 

Mrs. John Ell well counted for little. She 
had married in romance the handsome, 
swell young man ; reality had blasted her. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


1 1 

She had sunk into a will-less invalid, and 
made admiration of her husband into pride 
and a religion. She had accepted; she 
never protested. The eldest son by the 
dint of much pushing had been put into 
Camberton just before the final smash and 
the exile. In the hall of the college there 
hung a portrait of his great grandfather in 
his black preacher’s robes ; of this, Roper 
Ellwell, second, was a weak travesty. The 
thin features had been blurred in the pro- 
cess of transmitting ; an inclination to flabby 
stoutness of person made the young man 
portly, where the old minister had been 
nervously fragile. But Roper Ellwell, sec- 
ond, rarely compared notes, for he dined, 
not in hall under this picture, but at a pri- 
vate club with his own set. 

These young fellows drove over now and 
then to the Four Corners, a pleasant place 
for a man to spend an evening or a Sunday 
when the weather was fair and the fields 


12 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


green. The dinners were long and rich ; 
the wines good ; and if old Ellwell was a 
somewhat scandalous host, pleasing only to 
the coarser lads, there were other members 
of the family — the two daughters, Leonora 
and Ruby. 

The appearance of these two girls in this 
earthy family was anomalous. Leonora, 
the older sister, was like a water-lily in a 
pool of ooze and slime, delicately floating on 
the stagnant waters without a visible stain 
at a single point of contact. She had the 
Ellwell features, regular, angular, promi- 
nent ; with her father’s high forehead and 
finely tapering hands, and also her father’s 
thin unwholesome skin. Rut instead of the 
livid tan complexion of the man who had 
beaten about the years of his life, the wom- 
an’s pinkish transparency likened her again 
to the water-lily of the Middleton ponds. 
Her sister Ruby was more striking, much in 
the florid style of her brother. While she 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


13 


was young, she would be delicate enough to 
carry this kind of beauty ; ten years might 
bring about an unpleasant fulness of bloom. 
Both had been petty invalids over many 
small ills, until now the monotony of the 
Four Corners was bringing about a gentle 
activity and health. 

If the mother was will-less in the general 
concerns of life, she had shown one power 
in forming her daughters upon her own 
ideal of refinement. It was the way of life 
for men to be brutes, in a curious coarse 
fashion in speech, in appetites, in tastes; 
all that was an unaccountable arrangement 
of providence. So likewise it was befitting 
women to be chaste and refined, and to en- 
dure. Leonora comprehended her mother’s 
sad position, yet she never held her father 
responsible. Men were made so, with a 
necessity for wickedness; some day she 
would be called upon to marry such a man, 
and suffer patiently, without scandal, a simi- 


14 THE MAN WHO WINS 

lar experience with vice. The woman’s 
task was to keep fresh and unspotted herself, 
her home, her rooms, like some cool temple 
hidden away from summer heats and noisy 
commonness. 

This girl of eighteen knew the family 
story as thoroughly as her mother ; knew the 
disgraceful episodes, the unstable condition 
of fortune which they must expect. Tran- 
quilly, daintily she trod her way, avoiding 
“scenes,” covering up brutality, ignoring 
beastly talk or unpleasant dinner compan- 
ions ; occupying herself with her fresh 
dresses, or household matters ; now decorat- 
ing a room in the old Four Corners, or 
watering the ivies that were replacing the 
gnarled woodbines. Mrs. Ellwell had 
never kept improper books from her daugh- 
ters — it seemed so hopeless — and she read 
what her father read, accepting the lurid 
picture of life presented in the novels 
plentifully scattered about the house as 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


15 


probably correct, yet with an indifference 
and weariness. Some cool twilight at the 
Four Corners, when the little tasks of the 
day had been done, before the carriage ar- 
rived from the station with the unaccount- 
able male element of life, she might sit for a 
reflective half hour wondering why it had 
all been made so ; why passion was reck, 
lessly rampant in life ; why the world 
creaked in its action, groaning over the 
follies so thickly spread in its course. In 
the daring of dreams, provoked by the long 
shadows and the deep quiet, other forms, 
strange possibilities, might flicker in her 
mind ; but she was a woman ! And soon 
it was time to dress for the long dinner. 

There were evenings when the carriage 
returned empty, merely a telegram at the 
most, to account for the broker’s absence ; 
and these nights, sad for the neglected wife, 
were a relief to the daughter. The sweet 
monotonous day could go on (the country 


1 6 THE MAN WHO WINS 

day she secretly loved when there were only 
women about the house) even down to 
night with rest, the shrieking world ban- 
ished. There were other evenings when 
Ellwell drove up alone, morose, biting his 
iron-gray mustache in sullen disgust and 
ennui at some failure, perhaps in self-dis- 
content and fear. Leonora met him at the 
veranda with a kiss, and a bubbling, clever 
greeting that dragged out a smile. Dinner 
was then a pleasant place for talk, the elder 
daughter taking the lead and holding it 
until she had roused the others. And there 
were other evenings when the broker 
brought with him friends, anyone he hap- 
pened upon, when he was excited and loud, 
and the daughter had fears of the end. If 
the talk grew too boisterous, the women 
would hurry the courses and then withdraw 
to a side of the veranda, to sit sadly by 
themselves. If a quieter man, or some 
young fellow from Camberton, slipped away 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


17 


from the dining-room and joined them, they 
would talk gayly, simulating ease and nat- 
uralness. 

For all this tolerance Mrs. Ell well had 
the reputation with the broker and his com- 
panions, of being “a good woman ” and a 
‘ ‘ good wife.” And Ell well considered 
that he had redeemed his note to propriety 
in marrying and having children, who be- 
come hampering things when a man is in 
a tight place. The servants gossiped, were 
insolent at times, but in such a household 
there were many pickings. The Middleton 
people, driving by at night within sound of 
the noise when the Four Corners was gar- 
ishly lit, would repeat the family story and 
recall old Roper Ell well, who lay in a green 
mound near his first church. But the bro- 
ker, the “ village magnate,” as his daughters 
called him, was generous and free-handed in 
the parish. A “ high liver” but “a good 
fellow ” was his reputation ; so it was con- 


2 


1 8 THE MAN WHO WINS 

sidered a good thing for Middleton that the 
Ell wells had returned to the Four Corners. 

From the serene frugal household of 
Roper Ellwell where the wife had fitted 
boys “in the classical tongues” for Cam- 
berton, the family had come to this uncer- 
tain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctua- 
ations of the stock market ; now prodigal 
and easy, again in a panicky distress with 
dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and 
humiliation. Whatever happened — reckless, 
with a philosophy that did not embrace the 


morrow. 


Ill 


Roper second’s set dined at Tony Lamb’s 
in Camber ton. For the most part they be- 
longed to the same club, the A. O., and 
were congenial souls — young men, rich, from 
the great cities, who were taking the Cam- 
ber ton degree as a brevet in the social pro- 
fession. In winter they could be found at 
the New York and the Boston hotels ; in 
summer at the Bar Harbor hotels. 

A few men of different stamp were left 
over from a previous college generation of 
A. O.’s, such as Jarvis Thornton, who had 
begun when a boy out of school to dine 
with his old schoolfellows at Tony Lamb’s, 
and had kept it up from inertia and the 
loose liking of college fellowship, long after 


*9 


20 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


his way had parted from that of the present 
A. Q.’s. Thornton had entered Camber- 
ton with all the distinction that a well-con- 
nected Massachusetts family, easy circum- 
stances, and distinct scholarship would give. 
His course had been a gentle current of 
prosperity. He took first a high degree in 
the college, then a good degree in medicine. 
Now he was engaged in pushing forward 
some biological work on which he had al- 
ready published a monograph and which had 
brought him membership in some learned 
societies. 

One day at the beginning of the long va- 
cation, Roper Ellwell and he found them- 
selves alone at dinner. Young Ellwell was 
bored with the prospect of his own compan- 
ionship for a lonely drive to the country. 

“ I say, Thornton,” he threw out at ran- 
dom, “ come down to our place over night. 
The cart will be round in a few minutes.” 

Thornton, flaccid from hot days in the 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


21 


laboratory, welcomed any proffered excuse 
for a loaf. So they jogged away in the soft 
evening, from the cropped green hedges and 
the red brick buildings of Camberton into 
the country turnpike, smoking and keeping 
a peaceful silence. After athletics and carts 
had been talked out there was not much to 
start fresh conversation with. Camberton 
slipped away, with its endless problems, its 
ambitious prods. Jarvis Thornton entered 
another atmosphere when the cart crunched 
the gravel of the drive at the Four Corners. 
The Ellwells were on the veranda. “Who 
are the Ellwells ?” Thornton asked him- 
self as he found a chair next the white dress 
of the daughter. “ And why did I get my- 
self into a family party for a day and two 
nights without knowing what to expect?” 

He discovered an order of things he had 
never seen before in the rounds of his 
proper visiting list — the broker world. Ell- 
well had the possibilities of a gentleman, 


22 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


and in comparison with the three or four 
companions that he had with him this Sun- 
day, his manners were distinguished. He 
was a Camberton man, he would have Jarvis 
Thornton understand, a classmate of Thorn- 
ton’s father, and if their paths had sepa- 
rated, Ellwell, nevertheless, had a position 
equal to the Thorntons. As for the others, 
they were clerks, who in one way or another 
had managed to get their seats — men with 
no great permanent stake in the community, 
the modern substitute for the condottiere 
class. The Four Corners gave them a place 
to eat and drink and play a long game of 
poker, which amusements satisfied their 
cravings for diversion. Jarvis Thornton was 
a mere young prig that had walked inad- 
vertently their way ; young Roper Ellwell 
joined the Sunday game, while Thornton 
was left with the women to pass the day. 
The Sunday went off quietly with a long 
drive in the afternoon. At dinner Thorn- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


2 3 


ton sat beside the elder daughter. There 
were stretches of silence, for the general 
talk and the table interested him more 
than his companion. The other men dis- 
cussed business or scandal ; old Ellwell told 
stories that were broad and fatuous, to 
which young Ellwell responded with heavy 
laughter. Ruby joked with an old-young 
man named Bradley, a broker, who had been 
winning in the day’s game. As they came 
near the end of the long dinner Mrs. Ellwell 
excused herself. Thornton scrutinized his 
companion. The fumes of the place seemed 
to circulate about her unnoticed. 

“Does she understand it?” Thornton 
asked himself. “ Is this abstraction a mere 
bluff because I am a stranger? Or is she 
only bored ? ” 

When she noticed that Thornton was 
not eating or drinking she questioned him 
mutely with her eyes. 

* 1 Shall we leave ? ’ ’ 


24 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


He nodded. She rose and opened the 
long window — passed out, as if accustomed 
to avoid the puddles of life. She led the 
way to the farther end of the veranda, 
where only an occasional high voice could 
be heard. When she had settled herself on 
a lounge, she sighed inconsequently. 

“But perhaps you didn’t want to come? 
You can go back. We always walk about a 
good deal you know, and nobody will no- 
tice. You will want your coffee and cigar ; 
and Colonel Sparks tells amusing wicked 
little stories. I will stay here, though.” 

“And I think I will,” the young man 
added, simply. “ It’s really hot.” 

She opened her eyelids, which usually 
hung a little down as if heavy. 

“It tired you too, did it? Somehow I 
never felt so weary from it as I do to-night.” 

“Is it always just so ? ” he asked, 
bluntly. 

“Why, of course; why not? There are 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


25 


different people. But dinner is always the 
chief affair of the day in our house ; you see 
the men are free then and their cares are 
over. My father is very particular about 
dinner, but it is tiresome sometimes.” 

Talk dropped. This line was dangerous. 
“Tell me,” she said again in curious in- 
quiry ; “ you are not one of Roper’s set ? ” 
“ No, he is some years my junior.” 

“ But that does not make any difference. 
You never belonged to Roper’s set. Isn’t 
it very dull being a grind ? Roper says you 
are a dig and fearfully clever.” 

“One must play for something.” He 
waived aside the compliment. 

“But how do you do it? Tell me just 
what you do every day. ’ ’ 

Thornton was willing to take her seriously. 
He sketched his humdrum labors, the prizes 
in his way of life. “ And it isn’t so stupid,” 
he ended with a laugh, “to play the game 
that way when once you have begun it.” 


26 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


He added carelessly, as if to himself, “ the 
body will give you only a few sensations, 
such a very few, and so humiliatingly inade- 
quate.” 

“ So we live for the body,” the girl said, 
sharply, diving into his meaning. 

‘ ‘ How do I know ? ’ ’ Thornton replied, 
irritated at his foolish remark. 

“No you meant it; you meant it, and I 
suppose it is so. But one feels the body so 
constantly. Neuralgia racks me, and fatigue. 
Some days one would do anything to satisfy 
the cravings of that same body you seem to 
think we shouldn’t pamper.” 

“If you give in you must do more an- 
other time,” he added a little solemnly. 

‘ ‘ How you must despise us ! ” Her eyes 
flashed suddenly. “ You live coolly, tran- 
quilly on for something at the end, never, 
never forgetting to have balance.” 

“ Nonsense, I am blue at times, and life 
is tame.” 


THE MAN WHO WINS 27 

“ And we stumble about with our senses, 
making a muddle of our earth.’ ’ 

“ Here is the carriage already ! ” It was 
a relief to find an excuse to break away. 

“You will not come again, I fancy?” 
She asked, simply. An hour ago he would 
have answered yes, meaning in his heart 
never. Now the unsolved woman opposite 
prompted him to say : “If you want to see 
me again, if I may ? ’ ’ 

“Come down some, some week-day, 
when it is so quiet. We can have more 
talk, and I promise you it will do you good 
to mix with the herd occasionally.” 

She laughed lightly. 

“The blood has run out,” Thornton 
mused, as the cart rolled on through the 
gentle night. “ This fellow here is a flabby 
lump. She has neuralgia and long stretches 
of apathy, and other ills. Her children 
stand to lose, if she ever has any. She has 
kept the frame of the splendid old stock, 


28 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


but in its house the nerves and tissues are 
morbid and she is waiting,” he paused, and 
then the words came, “ waiting for dissolu- 
tion and endless rest.” 

“ Have another cigar? ” His companion 
interrupted his musing. 

“ The old man keeps a good lot. Whew, 
how he plays ! I left the little game ; the 
family couldn’t stand two in that. The old 
man will be savage this week. He can’t 
play against that Bradley. Bradley is a 
regular sucker. I tipped the pater a pointer 
on that long ago, and got well cursed for 
my pains. When the old man gets on a 
tear there’s no stopping him; no let up until 
he bucks his head against something hard. 
Well,” he lashed the horse into a gentle 
gallop, “ he can’t kick at my batch of bills. 
When he gets on a high horse, I know how 
to fix him.” He laughed. Jarvis Thornton 
turned a curious eye on his companion. 
Just this kind of intimacy in families he had 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


29 


never experienced — an armed neutrality of 
viciousness. He was anxious to get on, to 
reach his Camberton rooms, where the Sun- 
day forlornness was peace after this swinish 
atmosphere. Once back in his arm-chair, in 
the familiar confusion of books and papers 
and letters lying about, he wondered again 
what curious freak had led him to accept 
Roper Ell weU f s invitation. The Four Cor- 
ners faded from his imagination into a murky 
blur, with one central point of white light 
made by a thin summer dress, a girlish fig- 
ure, a face that had come into the world 
tired — devitalized. 

The next morning he plunged again into 
a stress of work with his old swing and in- 
tensity, as if single-handed at one spurt he 
was to make his way to the close of his 
labors. He ate his hurried meals at a little 
restaurant near the laboratory, and came 
back to his rooms late at night, unexhausted, 
nervously eager to begin again. 


IV 

Ten days went by. One morning he 
woke late, listless and unprepared for the 
usual tussle. The June sun was pouring into 
his rooms, the old portieres shaking gently 
in the soft breeze. Outside the world was 
flooded with sunlight. The new green grass, 
the full bushes along the paths, the warm 
blue of the sky seemed to mock his petty 
ardors, his foolish boyish designs of making 
prodigious strides. Life was not accom- 
plished that way. One made a little, a very 
little step, then came lassitude; later, one 
must go over the same ground again. There 
were no great strides in nature. All was 
accomplished by subtle change. He dressed 


30 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


31 


leisurely and looked about for a comfortable 
breakfast. There was something stronger 
than work in the world, especially to-day. 
He longed to meet the sunlight and earthly 
blessedness ; it was such a small thing to fag 
one’s self out at the laboratory. Half un- 
consciously he strolled toward the livery 
stable where he kept his nag. And then a 
quarter of an hour later he found himself on 
the turnpike, trotting along the fresh-water 
meadows, sniffing the air and the scented 
brooks. He laughed at himself. His horse 
plunged, freakish from his long rest in the 
stable. Suddenly he spurred on and rode 
furiously over the country roads, as if mad 
to reach a certain end. A little later, he can- 
tered up the gravelled drive of the Four Cor- 
ners, his horse wet and trembling, and he 
with a craving unexplained, a desire that had 
found a swift, brutal expression. 

“ You took a long time to think about 
it,” she was looking up at him reproach- 


32 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


fully, cool and fresh, with a morning blithe- 
ness about her, a physical calm that he had 
not felt before. The horse shivered and 
poked his head around to look at her. 

He flung himself off the horse, and took 
her hands; she reached him two as if one 
for a handshake would be inexpressive. 

“But it is splendid now that you have 
come ! We have a whole, long, quiet day ! ” 
Her tones were calm and slow, full of the 
summer peace and warmth. He felt straight- 
way content with himself. “Come,” she 
continued, smiling. “ I will make you a cool 
drink. Mamma has gone to town and Ruby 
is off somewhere in the pony cart.” When 
she had left him on the veranda he laughed 
at his prudish fancies that had pestered him 
a fortnight ago. This June morning she 
had exactly the necessary amount of anima- 
tion and health. All was well with her, and 
at peace. 

They had much gentle desultory conver- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


33 


sation. She took him about the place, 
showed him the old orchard where her 
great-grandmother’s pupils had played — one 
end was now made into a tennis-court, and 
the stable with its traces of the old barn 
where the Rev. Roper Ellwell had kept his 
horse and cow. Then there were little pigs 
and chickens, the various gardens that were 
all dear to her, where she patted and ca- 
ressed the plants as if they had been alive. 
She took him to her own den, a little room 
where the grandfatherly sermons had once 
been written, and where hung a copy of 
that oil portrait which Thornton had seen 
in the Camberton Hall. 

“Am I not like him?” she asked sud- 
denly, placing herself in the same light as 
the portrait. 

“Yes,” Thornton answered, “with a 
difference.” 

“ What is it ?” she pressed him anxiously. 

“ I don’t know, the something that has 

3 


34 THE MAN WHO WINS 

come in with the three generations,” he 
answered, slowly. 

“Tell me honestly,” she persisted, with 
all the egotism of youth aroused over a per- 
sonal verdict. 

“ Shall I? ” he said, seriously. She grew 
grave, but nodded. Thornton watched the 
color leave and a trace of helplessness cross 
her face. 

“The old fellow,” he kept looking from 
the portrait to the woman before him, “ in 
spite of his stiff board costume and the 
manner he’s painted in, was a great lump of 
fire. It burned hard in him, burned away 
flesh and common passions ; he must have 
been a restless, fervent man. You are calm- 
er,” he ended, stupidly. 

“Yes, you mean that his fire has burnt 
out ; that I am weak as water, when he was 
strong. ’ ’ 

“No, not that, exactly,” Thornton pro- 
tested. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


35 


“Yes, you did,” sher reiterated, sadly. 
“ And it is so, too. I am generally so tired. 
There are only hours like these, when some- 
thing flows in and I forget things and am 
happy. But it fades away, it fades away.” 

They stood silent before the portrait. 
Suddenly she remembered herself. 

“ Luncheon must be ready.” 

Ruby came in for luncheon and made 
amusing talk. She had been into the vil- 
lage and was full of the farmers. 

“I should think they would go crazy,” 
she ended, scornfully. “ What have they 
got to live for? I don’t wonder that the 
girls go into the mills and do anything 
rather than sit about this little hole.” 

Later they set out for the fields as the 
afternoon sun was quietly going down be- 
hind the fringe of pines that skirted the 
horizon. The atmosphere of the day had 
changed and become like the still calm of 
perfected life. The little aspirations of the 


36 THE MAN WHO WINS 

morning, the fascinations of nature, had 
given place to a content full of warmth. 
Miss Ell well took a winding wood -road that 
led first across the meadow, then over the 
pine-needles to a little pond. As they 
sauntered along Thornton watched his com- 
panion draw in the saturated air of the 
summer afternoon, as if consciously living 
thereon. She seemed to him detached, like 
a plant that drew its best power away from 
man, in fields and woods, a kind of para- 
site. 

“ You love this? ” he said, idly. 

“ Love it ! I live on it. I come out here 
and sit down under the trees and close my 
eyes. Then the odor from the earth seems 
to enter me and make me over. Do you 
suppose grandfather Roper ever had such 
desires, such coarse joys in nature? ” 

“ No, his ancestors had lived that for 
him. He had it stored up in him, and he 
gave it out in moral passion.” 


THE MAN WHO WINS 37 

“And — they have gone on giving it out 
in passion ” 

She raised her heavy lids questioningly, 
dreamily. 

“So I must be planted again, for I am 
exhausted. Ah, well, she is a kindly moth- 
er, is old nature, and I like to lie down in 
her arms.” 

A little brook flowed sluggishly about big 
tufts of meadow-grass. The late violets and 
swamp pinks sent up heavy odors, mixed 
with a strong earthy smell. They seemed 
to be in the midst of nature’s housekeeping 
and walked lightly as unannounced guests. 
They wandered on to an open patch in the 
woods and sat down, sinking into the dry, 
heated wood-moss. Thornton had no de- 
sire to talk ; she, who had listened to 
him the other time, now took him in 
charge. 

“You are so far away, here, in the heat 
and the earth ; so far away from the world; 


38 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


One gets tired always trying to catch up, 
and always being tired.” 

As she talked he felt his limbs heavy in 
obedience to her words. His mind became 
tranquil as under the influence of a nar- 
cotic; it seemed such a little thing what 
he did over there in Camberton, and so far 
removed from the strong pulse that beat be- 
neath his body deep down in the earth. 

“Why are men so foolish,” she whis- 
pered on. “We want really a few things 
only ; quiet, rest, peace, tranquil bodies, 
and this great earth to shimmer and change 
forever.” His eyes followed her face. Her 
skin was so transparent that each word 
seemed to make a dot of flashing color ; 
her bosom gently moved in rhythm to her 
words, and her eyes with the heavy falling 
lids smiled at him in conspiracy with the 
mouth. 

“ But that is not all the story — repose ! ” 
his words sounded hollow, like a lesson he 


THE MAN WHO WINS 39 

had learned by rote and propriety had 
obliged him to repeat. 

“No!” her voice was lower yet than 
ever; “ then comes love, and with love will 
flow in the passion and energy of life ! ” 

The words moved her body. What she 
said seemed to him intensely true for the 
moment. Again propriety offered protest. 

“And the other things — success and rep- 
utation and the good that the world needs. ’ ’ 
She moved her hands carelessly. 

“You would not need them.” There 
was great scorn in that them . They lay 
quietly for several minutes while the earth 
murmured about. She had drawn him pas- 
sively into her net. Like some parasitic 
growth she was taking her strength from 
him. But it was a new side to him, this 
yielding, and so in a few moments he re- 
membered that hard, angular self that went 
about the week in his clothes. He jumped 
up. 


40 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


“ I must ride back.” 

She followed without protest. She 
seemed to swim beside him, happy in ele- 
mental, very simple thoughts, a thin color 
flushing over her face. 

“ We have been so happy. It has been 
such a long, full day. Will you ever come 
again?” They stood in the shadows on 
the lawn. He was minded to say, no , but 
as he took her hand the Ellwell carriage 
drove up the country road. After glancing 
at it she blanched. Ellwell got out of the 
carriage unsteadily, with his large hand- 
some face flushed and distorted. He was 
half drunk, and in a great passion. Seizing 
the carriage whip in one hand and tak- 
ing the bridle of the horse by the other, 
he lashed the trembling beast for some 
seconds. Mrs. Ellwell slipped out of the 
rear seat and half ran into the house. Brad- 
ley got out of the carriage slowly, with a 
sneer on his face, and nodded to Thornton. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


41 


He smiled, as if to say : “ Badly jagged, 

old fool.” 

“ Go, there is Pete with your horse ! ” 
Miss Ellwell whispered. He was about to 
put his foot in the stirrup, and get away 
from the uncomfortable scene, when old 
Ellwell turned toward him. 

“ Don’t let me scare you, young man,” 
he said, with his regulation courtesy, the 
air of the old Ellwells. Thornton shook 
hands with him, noticing his bloodshot 
eyes, the puffy folds under the eyelids, the 
general bloat of an ill-regulated human ani- 
mal. “Are you going before dinner?” 
Ellwell continued. Thornton murmured 
something about duties and engagements. 
Ellwell bowed and lifted his hat. Miss Ell- 
well advanced as if to say good-by, then 
stopped. Her face was sad. Thornton’s 
horse wheeled impatiently. He grasped the 
saddle, and a moment later he was down the 
road out into the self-respecting fields and 


42 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


woods, where all had the sanctified peace of 
a starlight night. 

“ She did not like to ask me again, poor 
girl,” he murmured. 


V 

Whether Jarvis Thornton would have 
yielded again of his own accord to the im- 
pulse to travel Four Corners- ward remained 
unsolved. He had on hand some experi- 
ments that he was undertaking for a paper 
which he had to deliver at the close of the 
month. His day of dissipation seemed to 
spur him on once more along the ac- 
customed path, and only in the few lazy 
moments at the end of the day did his mind 
recur to the still meadows baked in the June 
sun, and to the woman who had tempted 
him into a dangerous world. One evening, 
when he was speculating luxuriously on that 
day of impulse, Roper Ellwell knocked at 
his door and entered. 


43 


44 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


Ellwell had never been there before. 
Jarvis Thornton had seen him from time to 
time at the A. Q. ; but a fast set, the Roper- 
Ellvvell crowd, having made the club over 
into a drinking and poker-playing estab- 
lishment, he had ceased to go there fre- 
quently. Ellwell was considerably battered, 
Thornton noticed, as he invited him, coolly, 
to take a seat and help himself to a cigar. 
He had come to pour himself out, and a 
dirty enough story there was to tell. He 
had been dropped from Camberton for gen- 
eral inadequacy ; but that was the least of 
his troubles. 

“ I could go to the old man and tell him 
that,” he explained, “his own record at 
Camberton wasn’t any too fine, and he has 
a grudge against the old place. I am in 
here for a lot of money, which he will have 
to stand. But ” 

Thornton looked at him unsympatheti- 
cally, without commenting on his story. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


45 


Why should he be troubled with the Ell- 
well excesses in the fourth generation ? He 
failed yet to see the point to all these con- 
fidences. 

“Your break-up is fairly complete,” he 
said at last, coldly. “ Many go down here, 
make a slip and bark their shins, but you 
have used two years in doing for yourself 
altogether. ’ ’ 

Roper Ell well hung his head. 

“So the Dean said; and there’s some- 
thing else.” Jarvis Thornton ceased to 
smoke as he went on. “I am married; 
the old man will never stand that, and it 
will break up the mater and my sisters fear- 
fully.” In short, he had come to Thorn- 
ton, with the confidence that an acquaint- 
ance with an older man inspires, to beg 
him to break the news to his people. Im- 
beciles gravitate to the strong. 

“ Why don’t you go yourself? ” Thorn- 
ton inquired, sick of the foolish affair. But 


46 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


one glance at the drooping, disjointed, 
miserable figure before him answered his 
question. He sat for some minutes debat- 
ing the point with himself. He could make 
a conventional excuse, and play the man of 
the world, who did not involve himself with 
unpleasant people. But his imagination 
presented the picture of the two sad women; 
their last hope knocked away by this crop- 
ping out of the family blight. Perhaps he 
could put it to them in a better light than 
either Roper or his father. He saw again 
the girl’s face standing on the lawn in the 
summer twilight — a face that must be con- 
stantly sad. 

“Well,” he said, “is she a bad lot, the 
woman you have induced to share your 
future ? ’ ’ 

Young Ell well was too miserable to take 
fire at this brutality. 

“No, she isn’t their sort though; she is 
a Swedish girl ; she is a nurse in a hospital.” 


THE MAN WHO WINS 47 

“You were forced to marry her?” the 
older man asked. 

Ellwell nodded assent. 

“And now she is making it uncom- 
fortable for you.” 

“I am trying to find something to do,” 
the young fellow protested. “ Then I won’t 
trouble them ; but if I go down there the 
old man will fling me out of the house.” 

In short, Jarvis Thornton rose early the 
next morning, and before the sun had 
heated the road, was on his way to the 
Four Corners. There was not much that 
he could do, after all, in his pitiful errand ; 
at least, for the mother. One more insult 
for her to accept, to be borne in stupid 
passivity. But for the daughter who had 
to live, it would be a different question; 
and by the time he had reached Middle- 
ton, he had not made up his mind how 
the tale was to be told. 

It was warm when he walked his horse 


4 8 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


over the gravelled drive at the Four Cor- 
ners. Mrs. Ellwell and her elder daughter 
were sitting on the piazza sewing. Pete 
was washing carriages ; the dogs were asleep 
in the grass. The place was quiet and in 
peace. The women received him cordially ; 
a bright color spread over the girl’s face 
with a contented smile that seemed to speak 
intimately to him. He plunged into his 
business quickly, putting the case sympa- 
thetically before them. They listened with- 
out a word, the girl’s face trembling and 
twitching slightly. Ruby had joined them, 
and Thornton interrupted his story, but 
Mrs. Ellwell motioned him to go ahead. 
While he was talking he hunted about for 
some bit of light to throw on the situation 
at the end. “ He wants to go away, and 
it might be best, if we can find something 
for him. I have an uncle in Minnesota 
on a railroad. He might find a little place 
to transplant him to. ” He stopped. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


49 


“ You have an uncle in Minnesota,” Mrs. 
Ellwell repeated, mechanically, her dry eyes 
staring idealess at him. “ You are very, 
very kind.” She rose and walked into the 
house. 

“ Fool,” Ruby muttered; her dark face 
flamed up angrily. Thornton noticed how 
much she resembled her handsome father. 
She had more fire in her than Roper second. 
“ I suppose he hadn’t pluck enough to come 
home with his own story. Father will be 
pretty mad. What did he marry that 
woman for ! ” 

“Well,” Thornton answered, calmly. 
“Perhaps we can build on that, the fact 
that he did marry her. That seems to me 
the most promising part of it.” 

The young girl cast a contemptuous glance 
at him and rustled into the house after her 
mother. Miss Ellwell had not uttered a 
word ; her face was bent over her work ; 
and he noticed a few suspicious spots on the, 
4 


5 ° 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


dark linen cloth she was hemming. He 
turned his face away to the sunny lawn 
and the dark, full-leaved trees that lay be- 
yond the road. A flock of sparrows were 
rowing in sharp tones among the leaves. 
The house-dog picked himself up lazily 
and walked over to Thornton, placing a 
wet muzzle on his trousers. The place was 
so peaceful, such a nest of an old Puritan ! 
And here were the demons that the divine 
had warred against holding his home as 
their arsenal. When he permitted himself 
to turn his face to the girl at his side, she 
was grave and pale, and somehow exhausted. 
All the weariness of the struggle between 
flesh and will seated itself in her heavy- 
lidded, sad eyes. 

“You must be a brave woman and help 
him,” Thornton said, feeling the conven- 
tionality and silliness of any remark. “ He 
mustn’t be hounded out of here like a dog, 
but made to feel that he can make a de- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


51 


cent future.” She nodded. “It isn’t the 
money,” she said at last. “Though I 
can’t see where it will come from. Nor 
the marriage, but the perpetual disgrace. 
It goes on increasing. We are all bad, 
worn out ; dear old grandpapa was the last 
good one. It is what you call a curse, a 
disintegration. Why struggle ? If we could 
all go to sleep and sleep it off? There 
is nothing ahead, nothing ahead ! ” 

“That is folly,” Thornton explained. 
“ We have all been held in thrall by 
this curse of heredity. It has been talked 
at us, and written at us, and proved to us, 
until it makes us cowards ! ” 

She looked at him sadly. 

“ ‘ The sins of the fathers unto the third 
and fourth generation,’ ” she repeated. 

“ Damn ! ” He rose excitedly. “ That 
is the most awful doctrine in the Bible, 
and we have believed it like sheep until 
we really make it true. When a weak man 


52 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


wants to go to thunder, he thinks of an 
uncle who was a drunkard, or a father who 
was a thief, and he goes and does likewise. 
Naturally ! And now science comes along 
and says it isn’t so, or at any rate there is 
strong doubt about it. In a few years we 
may prove that it isn’t so and free mankind 
from that superstitious curse.” 

The girl comprehended him but half. 
“ Why, I think that old grandfather Roper 
must have been a very passionate man, who 
fought against himself and conquered.” 

“Yes,” Thornton admitted, “there was 
a lot of vice bottled up among the Puritan 
saints. It has been spilling out ever since, 
but that makes no difference,” he went on 
vehemently to explain his theories. Some- 
how, now that his heart was touched, he: 
put passion and conviction into what his 
sober reason held as speculation. He made 
clear to her the newest theories from Ger- 
many. He had come out as a diplomat in 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


53 


a distasteful cause ; he became a pleader full 
of conviction. His imagination woke into 
a flame, and he saw anew, vitally, all the 
old problems that he had handled coldly in 
the laboratory. The woman sat dumbly, 
sucking in his statements and arguments. 
Then, as they stood on the grass waiting for 
Pete to bring up his nag, she said : 

“We are free, you think.” Her mind 
was laboring with his words. 

“In a large measure, we can start fresh : 
the die is not cast beforehand.” He added 
less warmly. 

“ But we copy what is about us. If we 
can’t escape from what you call the current 
of ideals we are born in, what difference 
does it make? It amounts to the same 
thing! ” 

She, the woman, pleaded with him, the 
man, to free her, to take her away. He 
answered, tenderly : 

“ We can ; each one can live his own life 


54 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


as a stranger to his shipmates. You have 
done so. ’ ’ 

“ It means a sacrifice. Some one must 
lift us. From some other life we could get 
the strength, and that other one loses — just 
so much as he gives.” 

Thornton’s brows contracted. She read 
the comment of reason that ran beside his 
text. 

“Who knows? Everything can’t be 
weighed in scales.” 

She did not ask him if he would return ; 
she knew in her heart that he would. 


Certain natural results followed from 
Jarvis Thornton’s first interference in the 
Ellwell family troubles. He felt bound to 
do what he could with the Minnesota uncle 
to secure some kind of a berth for young 
Roper. In a few weeks he was able to 
make another journey to the Four Corners, 
with the definite offer of a small agency in 
a little frontier town. He found the family 
conditions troubled, but temporarily quiet. 
Old Ellwell, after a passionate and violent 
attack, had lapsed into a glum silence. The 
son kept out of his way; hung about the 
premises during the day-time, and took him- 
self off as often as the mother and sisters 


56 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


could find money for him to spend. After 
several visits to the Four Corners, in such 
times of family stress, Thornton found him- 
self on the most intimate terms with the 
young woman who seemed to realize the 
suffering most. 

He made up his mind that, come what 
might, he should, in justice to his father, 
tell him the story. Thornton’s father was 
an elderly man whom most good Boston 
people were glad to know. He had a little 
fortune ; he owned a comfortable little 
brick box on Marlboro’ Street ; he had culti- 
vated enough tastes to keep him reasonably 
occupied ever since his wife’s sudden death 
years ago. Jarvis Thornton enjoyed his 
father, and the enjoyment was reciprocal. 
The two had put their heads together and 
planned out the younger man’s life-work, 
and each felt an equal interest and responsi- 
bility for the success of their speculation. 
What the father’s career had lacked in 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


57 


effectiveness, they now determined should 
be supplied by Jarvis. So the son felt 
already some compunctions when he real- 
ized how far he had gone in this impor- 
tant matter without putting his father in the 
way of criticizing it. 

It was a stifling July evening that Jarvis 
took to open the matter to his father. The 
old man had been unusually silent, almost 
preoccupied during the dinner they had 
eaten together in the little back dining- 
room. The son noticed that the heat had 
told on his father, and he blamed himself for 
keeping him in this dusty, deserted town, 
while he completed his laboratory work. 
The electric cars made a great whirr, just 
around the corner, every few moments, and 
the little strip of park behind the house was 
full of the poor people who had crawled out 
of their hot holes to get some breathable air 
in the green spots abandoned by the rich. 
Jarvis Thornton cast his eyes lazily over the 


58 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


dusty library where they had gone for their 
smoke. Among its tall rows of sober-look- 
ing books he had got his first taste for the 
life he was beginning to lead, the life on the 
whole that seemed to him the most satisfac- 
tory of any he had looked at. There was a 
gulf between him and this passion-ridden 
mob which swarmed about the public parks 
in a hot summer ; there was, also, a gulf be- 
tween him and his neighbors in the con- 
tiguous brick boxes, who strove merely to 
make the boxes comfortable. And to his 
father who sat opposite to him, his fine thin 
face with the short gray beard occasionally 
lighted by the red coal of his cigar, he 
owed it all. Somehow to-night he felt that 
he was about to propose a raid across that 
gulf, a voluntary abandonment of the calm, 
effective position that he had been blessed 
with. 

He had no difficulty in broaching the 
affair. To discuss a matter with his father 


THE MAN WHO WINS 59 

was like talking to a more experienced and 
patient self. 

“Did you ever know the Ell wells?” he 
began, simply. “ One of them was the old 
pastor in the Second Church, and his grand- 
son is on the stock board now. ’ ’ The older 
man nodded. Then he continued, describ- 
ing his first introduction to the family, his 
impression of the Four Corners, his first 
visit there, with clear, simple portraits of 
the various Ell wells of this generation. 
When he came to the slump of Roper Ell- 
well, second, he found it less easy to explain 
how it had involved him. His last visits to 
the Four Corners he passed over hastily, and 
after a few broken remarks about the woman 
who had drawn him there, he came to an 
awkward silence. His father kept on smok- 
ing, as if waiting for a final statement. As 
it did not come, he spoke, in a clear, impar- 
tial voice. 

“Yes, I have known all the Ell wells ex- 


6o 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


cept these young people. I was just out of 
Camberton when the war broke out. John 
Ellwell shirked then ; it was not much to do 
to go to the front. It was in the air to 
fight.” He paused to let this aspect of the 
case sink in. “ Later I was chairman of 
the committee that requested him to leave 
the Tremont Club. And still later, when 
his swindle on the exchange came to light, 
I helped his father hush the matter up. He 
was a bad lot.” 

“ Yes,” his son answered slowly. “An 
unusually bad lot. He is rotten ! ’ * 

“ Of course, besides the scandals we 
have mentioned there were, probably are, 
others with women. What you say about 
the children shows how impoverished is 
the blood. The son could hardly end 
otherwise. You have given him a new 
soil to grow in, but the end must be 
there ! ’ * 

The old man pointed stiffly to the 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


61 


street. Jarvis Thornton made no reply. 
Presently his father -continued : 

“They were not transplanted in time. 
They are degenerate Puritans. There are a 
great many like them, who have petered 
out on the stony farms, or in little clerk- 
ships, or in asylums of one sort or another. 
The stock was too finely bred in and in, 
over and over, for three hundred years 
nearly. Insanity and vice have been 
hoarded and repressed and passed on.” He 
seemed to speak with personal bitter- 
ness. 

“ We have the taint of scrofula, of drink, 
of insanity, all covered up. Those were 
wisest who scattered themselves forty years 
ago into new lands. Then the magnificent 
old stock took a new life. It would not be 
too much to say that wherever we find good 
life, hope, joy, or prosperity in our broad 
country, you may trace it all back to New 
England.” 


62 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


The son listened wonderingly to this es- 
say on the Puritan stock. 

“ But I don’t believe in it,” the young 
man protested. “ I don’t believe that it is 
good science or good morals to hang about 
our necks this horrid millstone of hered- 
ity.” 

His father continued in his impartial 
tone. “ You know how much of that rot- 
ten stuff is in our family. You remember 
the Sharps, and the Dingleys, and the 
Abraham Clarkes. You know your mother 
died from sheer exhaustion,” the old man 
trembled, “and I have been spared for a 
fairly useless life by constant patching up. 
The war didn’t knock me up only ” 

“ I will not believe it ! ” Jarvis Thorn- 
ton uttered, in intense tones. His father 
sighed. 

“And by some fortune you were spared ; 
you have grown up strong and sound and 
equable. I led your interests to the line 


THE MAN WHO WINS 63 

of work you have chosen, for a pur- 
pose * * 

He paused again. “In order that sex, 
mere sex, might have no special unhealthy 
fascination for you; that you might meet 
these problems and treat them as judiciously 
as you would a matter of banking — without 
sentiment, without passion, without an ig- 
norant, liquorish hallucination ” 

The son raised his hand. 

“ And now it has come in a new way,” 
he said, quietly, “ through your pity and 
your generosity and your faith. But it has 
come.” 

What Jarvis Thornton replied was neither 
coherent nor weighty. He flung aside the 
idea of pity or generosity as absurd. He 
loved this woman for herself, because, be- 
cause he loved her. His father smiled a 
sad, kind smile. 

“ The mother does not seem to have 
added much to the blood. ’ ’ He threw this 


6 4 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


out in order to get the subject back into 
more reasonable channels. 

“ No, she is a weak woman. But what 
of it ? I don’t marry the family. We shall 
leave them and build a new life, and break 
the curse.” He smiled, slightly. 

“ Granting your beliefs that no harm 
would come to your children, that it is all 
chance about these matters,” persisted the 
father, “still you cannot escape the family. 
You marry the conditions ; they will re- 
main with you. They , if nothing else, will 
ruin your life.” 

The younger man rose as if to shake off 
a physical bandage. For the first time in 
his life he felt conscious of a rebellion with 
the elemental conditions of existence. 

“ What if it does mean corruption and 
misery ! I want my joy, my life, even if 
they write ‘ Failure ’ at the bottom of my 
page.” 

“ No, no ! ” his father protested. “ You 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


65 


will take the pain all right and the conse- 
quences like a man, but you will never be- 
lieve that swinish statement you have just 
made. ’ ’ 

This brought the younger man to his 
calmer mood. 

“ I hate them,” he said, bitterly, “more 
than you can ; but her I love.” 

“ And to her you will sacrifice all? ” 

His father looked at him searchingly, 
longingly. 

“ Yes, if need be, all , but you ! ” 

The old man smiled coolly. 

“ I shall not count long, and you are in- 
dependent, anyway. But I don’t care to 
put the matter on such a footing. We have 
not lived that way.” 

“ I will do whatever you desire,” the son 
said, “ except ” 

“ I shall ask nothing,” his father replied, 
gently. “ If you mean to marry her you 
must do so now, when she will need you 
5 


66 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


most. There can be no compromise, un- 
less your own mind is divided.” 

As Jarvis Thornton left the house that 
night he felt that he had dealt his father a 
blow. 


VII 

Some days later when Jarvis Thornton 
took the familiar turnpike road he had not 
recovered from the serious mood his father’s 
talk had brought about. It hung on him 
like a weight. He did not ride at a lover’s 
pace ; rather, cool and determined, with a 
spice of pride in following his own judg- 
ment. But the old man’s prophecy met an 
answering fear in his own mind — it was 
dangerous to pluck roses from some ruins. 

His father’s sweetness in the matter got 
hold of him, and he began to appreciate, in 
a vague way, the yearning that old men 
have to witness fulfilment on the part of the 
younger generation. Mere age, he saw, 
reduces the complexity of desire, but ren- 
67 


68 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


ders it single and intense. Whether his 
father was right or not in his gloomy analy- 
sis, he was deeply convinced and foiled. 
His last method of success had turned out 
illusive, yet he had not reproached, nor 
domineered, nor dictated, nor appealed. 
He had expressed a little of his keen sor- 
row, but insidiously this attitude had tainted 
the young man’s ecstasy. 

Would she comprehend his father’s no- 
bility? He could hardly explain the situ- 
ation to her in all its bearings, even if she 
were fitted to understand. And he felt that 
hers would be a woman’s sympathy, so 
ready, yet on the surface. It needed a 
man, with his less expressive nature, to 
comprehend deep down the bearings of this 
case. However, if she loved him — it was 
pleasant to feel that she did love him — she 
must plan with him to defeat the old man’s 
prophecy. They would cut loose from the 
conditions, come what might. He closed 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


69 


his mouth firmly. Manlike he planned as 
if he knew all the elements of the question. 

His horse trotted up the little gravel way 
to the Four Corners. Suddenly she ap- 
peared standing on the big grooved mill- 
stone which served as a horse-block. Her 
white dress had an under bodice of pink, 
that gave her more than ever the appear- 
ance of an opening water-lily. 

“ I have a new walk for you to-day.” 

Her greeting betrayed no surprise. She 
was evidently sure of the outcome. As 
Thornton flung himself from his horse, he 
had a sensation of yielding — to the pre- 
arranged. 

“But you must be so hot,” she added, 
taking in his solemn face. “ Come into 
the pantry while I make you a cocktail. 
Papa says I could get a place as a bar- 
maid.” 

With a ripple of contented laughter she 
led the way to the little pantry over the 


70 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


wine-cellar. It was stocked and arranged 
like a miniature bar; a high side-board 
was carefully crowded with polished cut- 
glass, and the little room exhaled aromatic 
odors from the various wines and bitters. 
He sat down near the open window while 
she busied herself in crushing ice to a flaky 
coolness and gathering the materials. To 
see her at this job seemed to put all of the 
solemnity of the occasion far away. Yet 
he sneered at himself for his prudery. 

The sun blazed down outside on the 
scorched lawn ; here the summer heat 
brought out all the pungent odors of the 
place, permeated, so it seemed, by the stock- 
broker, by the kind of American who could 
endure life only when his nerves were 
soothed in some way. Pfa ! The atmos- 
phere of the Four Corners’ swine ! They 
reminded him of the bondage to the flesh 
that in his masterful mood he hated. He 
sipped his cocktail and lit a cigarette, in- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


71 


haling it with deliberation, noting with idle 
curiosity how his pulses responded by sharp 
little beats. 

The escape from reality ! He had always 
liked blunt reality, and believed in it pro- 
fessionally. You must have a sane mind 
and a normal body to believe in reality, 
and hence few cared for that kind of bit- 
ter bread. The mob tried to escape. 
Would he too, perhaps, try to escape ? 
What a time he was losing from that slow 
methodical task he had set himself ? Three 
months ago had occurred the first break in 
his regular current of thought, and now he 
was drifting about aimlessly in a mess of 
passions and desires. 

“Do you like it?” Miss Ellwell asked, 
anxiously. He had it on his lips to say : 

“I hate it.” That would sound silly 
and incomprehensible, like an impromptu 
lecture on the sins of strong drink. His 
eyes wandered over her, resting on one 


72 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


white arm that lolled across the side- 
board. 

“I like you,” his eyes said. A wave of 
brutal indifference to everything but imme- 
diate desire surged in the man. However, 
tossing away his cigarette, he nodded. 

A little dash of pink in her face and neck 
answered his eyes. 

“Now come.” She put back the last 
glass and pulled down the shade, shutting 
in the heavy odors. 

They sauntered out through the orchard 
to the wood-road that led eastward from the 
Four Corners. 

There was a section of Middleton domi- 
nated by a high hill, with a country pond 
at its foot, that possessed an air of distinc- 
tion, of being apart from the flat village and 
the small barren farms. High stone-walls 
ribbed its green surfaces, meeting in a heap 
at the top, where also a few wind-blown 
apple-trees maintained their stunted growth. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 73 

A little below the crown of the hill there 
was a thick cluster of nut-trees. From this 
height one could see the Hampton hills to 
the east, outlined by a thin row of trees 
drawn as if with a heavy brush along the 
margin of the landscape. Elsewhere the 
hills were rounded bare mounds. Farther 
north this undulating line dipped into a 
green plain, and there, so the tradition ran, 
you could see on a clear day the white sails 
of coasting schooners and a shimmer of 
eastern light that might be the marshes of 
Essex, or indeed the blue sea itself. This 
apple-tree crowned peak was a kind of look- 
out from the dead country to the living 
sea. 

Miss Ellwell brought Thornton out at the 
mound of stones on the crest ; they rested 
their arms on the wall, looking east search- 
ingly for the bit of blue coast and the 
sails. 

“There, there, lean see it,” she cried. 


74 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


He looked at her incredulously. There was 
nothing but a nebulous mass of blue. 
“Well, I have seen it,” she protested, 
“ two or three times. To-day it is a bit 
hazy.” 

“ Why do you want to see it ? ” he asked, 
idly. 

“ Oh, it is so different ! It is big and 
strange and unfamiliar; don’t you like it? ” 

“ ‘ There is a world beyond ! ’ ” He an- 
swered without direct appositeness. They 
turned to the shade of the nut-trees. In 
the July sun the woods seemed asleep, 
merely soothed by a wandering breeze, and 
they flung themselves down on the warm 
ground. All about the air swam with 
pleasant, heated, drowsy, earthy odors. 

As she took off her hat and nestled back 
into the undergrowth, Thornton felt her 
anaemic body, pale from the fatigue of the 
hot walk, as if the water-lily were drooping 
in the mid-day sun. Yet she was somehow 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


75 


intimately connected with the brooding 
earth. There were two bodies — the body 
of flesh that had come with fatigue 
and feebleness into the world, and the 
body of passion that was blooming into 
power. 

She talked of the thousand trivialities that 
go to make the conversation between a 
man and a woman. Thornton lay silently, 
stretched on the warm leaves at her feet, 
feeling her bloodless face with its sharp blue 
veining. Each was conscious of a dynamic 
something in the air ; their minds had a 
frank understanding while the talk skipped in 
and out among nothings. When she began 
once more to talk of the sea that lay down 
there beyond the green meadows and the 
blue haze, a faint rose-color of animation 
darted over the pallor and made the moist 
eyes flash. The sea ! That stood in her 
mind for the mysteries of change, of the un- 
known. Thornton knew that this wistful- 


7 6 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


ness after change had nothing definite in it, 
was merely a girl’s hunger for motion ; yet 
that had divided her in his mind from her 
kind. 

“There is a world beyond,” she mur- 
mured, in wondering repetition of his words. 
The branches of the nut-trees swayed in the 
odorous wind as if whispering, “Yes, yes, 
we know of it. That world beyond . . . 

over the hills of flesh, and the tedious wastes 
of tired bodies, there is a world of peace be- 
yond ! ” 

Her eyes came to his face wistfully. He 
held the keys of that beyond. . . . Some- 
thing had snapped in his well-ordered mech- 
anism, and he was going, going, drifting 
will-lessly into feeling and longing. And 
the next moment he held her, looking into 
a face that burned with love. There were 
no words. Life had been too strong for his 
little plans; it had mocked him and driven 
him passionward, like a bit of straw caught in 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


77 


a gale. The hours swam on unheeded, while 
they rested there face to face. Then came 
the going home across the afternoon woods ; 
she silent and content, he trying to account 
for himself. When he had speculated about 
such matters, he had seen himself discussing, 
quite properly, the serious affairs of life with 
some tall girl of distinguished carriage, some 
one of the many young women whose ac- 
quaintance had made up his Boston parties. 
He had expected that their conversation 
would grow more serious as this intimacy 
deepened, and that at Tast, having found 
themselves of one accord on the sober ideals 
of life, he should broach to her this final 
proposition involving both their lives. He 
had half imagined such a situation with sev- 
eral fine young women ; the scene had always 
been played out in a drawing-room filled with 
bric-a-brac and heavy hangings, he in his 
long black afternoon coat. There had been 
a touch of solemnity in it, a weighty sense of 


78 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


responsibility that would have made their 
first kiss a little sepulchral. 

Now, this ! Her hand touched his ; his 
mind left these bizarre images, and suddenly 
it seemed that life was one wilderness of 
woods in the late afternoon sun, down which 
he was fated to wander in a lethargic dream. 
One dominant feeling of tenderness ; one in- 
difference to the baying of reason — merely 
love, and the soft, warm earth, and the green- 
ness of living things, and the woman whose 
dress brushed his arm. Ah ! that was sweet 
and precious at any*price. 


VIII 

He had put something in motion on that 
languid July day, and suddenly he was 
whirled along in a stream of consequences. 
There was an interview with Mr. Ellwell, a 
sudden opening of the Ellwell family arms, 
and he was one of them — not much to 
his relish. Ruby Ellwell brought out her 
engagement to Bradley, the young stock 
broker her father had chummed with. The 
Four Corners renewed its worldly life in a 
garden-party, at which both engagements 
were announced. Thornton had to stand 
in line with his new brother-in-law, and for 
all this disagreeable business, the sole con- 
solation was the happiness the woman he 
loved found in it. For her it was a re- 
79 


8o 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


habilitation of the family, the first dawn of 
those better times she had looked for all 
these years. 

He remembered for all his lifetime how 
his father had met her ; how he had walked 
across the lawn, old, and gray, and aloof, 
and had taken both her hands. He had 
smiled at her tenderly, as if she were a little 
girl, much as he had smiled years before at 
Jarvis’s mother. Then he had kissed her 
on both cheeks, and had stood patting her 
hands in a gentle caress. Later he had 
slipped away in the same quiet abstracted 
manner. For the rest of the day Jarvis 
Thornton had been a little sad, as well as 
bored, without knowing exactly why. 

They had planned a simple wedding for 
September; they would walk to the vil- 
lage church, the old white box of a meeting- 
house where the first Roper Ellwell had led 
his congregation. Martinson, Thornton’s 
youthful hero at the Camberton Theological 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


81 


School, would meet them in his episcopal 
robes on the little green in front of the 
church, and then the party, not more than 
a dozen, could walk together into the bare 
old building, and in the solemn quiet of the 
country noon complete the marriage. A 
quiet dinner, and then away from the Four 
Corners. 

But it could not be so. The handsome 
Ruby wished to have a “ function,” some of 
the conventional excitements of this enter- 
tainment. The two sisters must be married 
together ; a special train must come from 
Boston ; a grand reunion would be held of 
all the old family friends who had shaken 
their heads over the Ellwell misfortunes. So 
the two quieter souls yielded, and the mar- 
riage left a bad taste in the young bride- 
groom’s cup of joy. 

Almost at once they had gone abroad to 
Berlin, where Thornton proposed to work for 

an indefinite time. It seemed to him that 
6 




82 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


he should accomplish more than one object, 
by carrying on his work in Europe; he 
could insensibly divide himself and his wife 
from the Ellwell connection. All went 
sweetly for his first months ; he had begun 
to regard his marriage as an idyl slipped in 
between pages of prose. But when their 
child was coming, his wife grew restless ; 
she must go home, he saw ; it was natural 
that she should long to return to her mother 
at such a time. 

So back to Boston they had gone, Thorn- 
ton contenting himself with the reflection 
that he could go ahead in Boston almost as 
well as in Europe ; that fortunately he was 
not tied by money wants, and that the 
Camber ton laboratories were always open to 
him. When the little daughter came he 
schemed a new move ; he was offered a 
headship of a laboratory somewhere in the 
middle West. He began to feel the force 
of his father’s remarks about transplanting. 


~N, 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


83 


Yet they never went. Another man got 
the appointment while he was persuading 
his wife. Her mother was so lonely, now 
that Ruby was living in New York. They 
had no necessity to live far away in order 
to earn money. When he proposed moving 
to Washington, the same ground had to be 
gone over again, and the same gentle obsti- 
nate resistance to be met. 

“Go to Washington,” old Thornton said 
when his son stood by his bedside during 
the last illness. “Go to Washington,” he 
repeated, querulously. And as the younger 
man made no reply, but sat with his hands 
shoved in his pockets, brooding, the sick 
man spoke again, “You will never do any- 
thing here.” 

“Yes, we must make a move,” assented 
his son in a voice that said “ no.” 

After his father’s death, they went to live 
in the Marlboro’ Street house. There was 
no more talk of moving away. The Ell- 


8 4 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


wells came in town for the winter, living 
in a flat at one of the new hotels near by. 
Mrs. Thornton had the habit of spending 
her mornings in the flat with her mother 
and the baby. Thornton could find no 
reasonable grounds for the rebellion he felt 
over this tie, this close proximity to decay 
in which he was compelled to live. Yet he 
loathed the thought that his child, unimpor- 
tant as she was now, should begin her life 
by imbibing such a forlorn atmosphere. 

He could tell each day what had been 
going on in those long morning hours ; how 
his wife’s sympathies had been on the rack ; 
how mother and daughter had sighed over 
the unaccountable miseries of life. She 
seemed to him to come home with the old 
anaemic look, with the old restless hunger in 
her face, and then he was reminded that 
their child was more than delicate. It 
would lead him to envy mere gross flesh and 
blood, the coarse fibre of some riotously 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


85 


healthy common folk. Indeed it was a 
crime against his fellow-men, this maintain- 
ing a bankrupt stock unless he could patch 
it into vigor. There were hints too that 
fell indefinably now and then about the Ell- 
well affairs, the stock-broker’s poor health, 
the perpetual disappointments that discour- 
aged him. His wife had relapsed into the 
Four Corner’s habit of regarding incapacity 
and folly as mere misfortune. It irritated 
him to realize all this sentimental pity over 
a blackguard. Yet she was right ; she had 
the opinion of centuries on her side; was 
she not their daughter before she was his 
wife ? 

There were times when Ruby came on 
from New York for a visit, bringing her 
child, a boy, with her. Thornton grimly 
noted this vigorous little animal of a neph- 
ew and compared him minutely with his 
own feeble child. He compared also the 
mothers. Ruby had already begun the 


86 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


period of over-bloom. The Bradleys, he 
gathered, lived a kind of a tramp existence, 
moving from boarding-house to hotel as 
Bradley went up or down. And Ruby, with 
all her assurance and her affluent person, had 
not lost the Ellwell ailments. Yet to her 
child had been given the strong stock he 
envied. Nature had coolly overlooked his, 
and carried her blessings where they were 
not deserved. 

Such reflections made him more tender to 
his wife. He wondered if she ever thought 
of this contrast. 

When he was working in his little back- 
room study, he wondered what the two sis- » 
ters could find to talk about for hours. He 
fancied that they were going over the old 
items of the family budget, the thousand 
trivialities of family gossip that never seemed 
to be ended and never lost their interest. 
One day he could hear Ruby earnestly talk- 
ing — she had just come from New York — 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


87 


and then he thought he caught the sound of 
suppressed tears. After a time he rose ner- 
vously and walked out to his wife’s room 
where the sisters were. 

Ruby’s face was excited though sullen. 
She had not taken off her hat, and in her 
haste her gloves had fallen on the floor by 
the door. Her sister was crying, quietly. 
“What’s up?” Thornton turned sharply 
to Ruby, his voice betraying his desire to 
sweep her out of his life forever. 

A slight sneer crossed her face. She said 
nothing, and punched the footstool with the 
toe of her boot sullenly, as if resenting .his 
appearance. As Thornton waited for an 
explanation, she rose and picked up her 
gloves. 

“You’ll have to tell him,” she spoke 
roughly to her sister. “I’m going over to 
mother’s.” 

Thornton accompanied her to the door. 
Her air was defiant and sullen; Thornton 


88 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


contemptuously refrained from questioning 
her. 

“ Well,” he said, quietly, when he had re- 
turned. Something very bad was to come ; 
it had been hanging about in the air for 
months. 

“Jarvis, I can’t tell you; it’s so awful. 
What shall we do? Poor Aunt Mary and 
Aunt Sophie ! ’ ’ 

“ They have lost their money.” 

She nodded. 

“ Through Bradley? ” 

“ Oh, Jarvis, I have brought you so much 
trouble; I am afraid I ought not to have 
kept you here in Boston.” 

“ I don’t see how that could affect this,” 
he replied kindly to her irrelevant contri- 
tion. “ Has it all gone? ” 

“ I suppose so.” 

“ How did he get hold of it? ” 

“ I don’t remember anything. Papa had 
it — all their money — to invest, and he let 


THE MAN WHO WINS 89 

Ruby’s husband have it to put in wheat. 
It’s all gone.” 

Thornton had heard that John Ellwell’s 
sisters had been left a small fortune by their 
father with strict directions to keep it out of 
their brother’s hands. They were two deli- 
cate maiden ladies, who had floated about 
Europe aimlessly for a number of years, liv- 
ing in one watering-place after another. 
Their refusal to have anything to do with 
their brother had been one fruitful topic of 
family discussion. A few years before, how- 
ever, when American stocks were booming, 
the two maiden ladies had withdrawn their 
hundred thousand from the woollen mill 
where old Mr. Ellwell had placed it, and had 
given it to the stock-broker for reinvestment. 
Their brother had always fascinated them. 
He was clever, wicked perhaps, but so 
clever that he always got into good things. 
The conclusion came shortly. For the last 
six months Ellwell had managed to keep up 


9 o 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


the interest ; now he had come to the end 
of his rope, and he was about to commit 
suicide by selling his seat in order to pro- 
vide a pittance, at least, for his sisters. 

Husband and wife sat silent for a long 
time. 

“Why did Ruby come to break the 
news ? ’ ’ Thornton asked at last. His wife 
looked at him timidly, then flushed. 

“ I suppose she thought we could do 
something; but what shall we do? We 
never have anything left over. ’ ’ 

The bolt had fallen ; Thornton traced its 
course in a few little moments. 

“There is but one thing,” he said, gently ; 
“ we must see that your aunts do not starve, 
at least for the present.” 

“You’ll have to give up your inves- 
tigations and laboratory work, and all 
that ? ’ ’ 

She was striving to comprehend his situa- 
tion, an effort that he had planned for her 


THE MAN WHO WINS 91 

that July day when they had become en- 
gaged. 

“For the present.” 

“How can you love me? Your life 
would have been so different. You have al- 
ways said that you were equipped with ideal 
conditions, just enough money to work as 
you liked. And now you can’t escape un- 
less I die.” 

He disliked to utter commonplace lies ; 
although she spoke the truth in her sudden 
realization of the facts to have him deny it, 
he could not protest ; so he kissed her instead 
and said, later : 

“We can’t reckon things that way.” 
Her old look of misery came back. 

“You can’t win with me.” 

“ But I have won love.” 

And she was appeased. 

From that date he had become a man in 
the sordid sense of the word. He had taken 
his father-in-law sternly in hand, presented 


9 2 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


the case firmly, and showed him the extent 
of the sacrifice his worthless life had made 
necessary. He paid from that day the nor- 
mal income to the Misses Ellwell’s bankers, 
but he gave the stock-broker to understand 
that was the end. Any further protection 
for him was not to be found in this life. 

A few months later he hung out his shin- 
gle as practising physician and surgeon. 
There would be need enough of money in 
his life ; the way to get it was by using his 
acquaintances in Boston and practising only 
about a few streets of the Back Bay. So at 
thirty he had begun the ordinary routine of 
a well-connected physician — the profession 
he had sneered at in his youth, the profes- 
sion of polite humbug. 


IX 

The next fifteen years that carried Jarvis 
Thornton over from one generation to an- 
other passed with placid monotony. He 
had been decidedly successful. His little 
round of Boston streets where he doled out 
mental and physical encouragement, re- 
sounded with his praises. Moreover he was 
known as a “good fellow,” an epithet that 
his warmest friends in Camberton days 
would not have bestowed on him. He was 
sleek and solid ; well-groomed and rounded, 
in spite of constant activity, and if his scien- 
tific reputation was not more than mediocre, 
it was enough to give him a lectureship on 
neurosis in the Camberton Medical School — 
that necessary mark of approval for a doctor 


93 


94 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


practising in his circle. He spent eight 
months of each year in Boston; the other 
four he practised at Wolf Head, a fashion- 
able sea-side place that he had done much to 
promote. There he had built a roomy cot- 
tage on a little point of land, and he had 
shrewdly invested in the Improvement Com- 
pany that held the best lots along the shore. 
He was a comfortable family physician to 
have about, with a good digestion and a de- 
sirable connection ; in his few hours of rec- 
reation he could be counted on for tennis 
or yachting or a dinner-party, even with a 
dance attached. 

One step that marked the prosperity of the 
Thorntons was their new house on Beacon 
Street, selected with much care in the short 
block or two of stable neighborhood. When 
they had moved into this new house, Mrs. 
Thornton had referred to the past indi- 
rectly. 

“ Why don’t you take the sewing-room ? ” 


THE MAN WHO WINS 95 

“What for? I can’t entertain patients 
on the third floor.” 

“You could use it for a laboratory for 
your things,” Mrs. Thornton suggested 
vaguely. “ I could get along without it.” 

The doctor smiled. 

“Oh, I don’t need so much room for 
that ; I haven’t over much time these 
days. ’ ’ 

It touched him that she remembered, 
even remotely, the bearing of that tragic 
day when her sister had come to announce 
the Bradley rascality. Soon she began 
again, this time nearer the heart of the 
matter. 

“Jarvis, you don’t mind it so very much, 
the change you had to make, now.” 

“ Now that I have more practice than 
I can attend to ? ” 

The doctor’s voice had an inexplicable 
tone in it at times which made his wife 
shy of intimate conversation. 


9 6 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


4 4 You are such a success/’ she struggled 
on; “and everything has come out so — 
peacefully. ’ * 

“ There are two verbs, my dear, which 
most people confuse : to succeed and to 
win.” Then, as he noted her troubled face, 
he kissed her. “ That bell has been ring- 
ing for half an hour. That is an outward 
and visible sign of the first verb. I must 
heed it.” 

When he left her, she mused over his 
words. Except for occasional disturbing 
moments like these, it never occurred to 
her that her dreams made in that hot sum- 
mer at the Four Corners had not come true 
for them both. She had dreamed vaguely 
and she had realized vaguely. When she 
contrasted her husband’s career with her 
father’s, or with any other that made up r 
the repertoire among her acquaintances, it 
seemed fair and unblemished. But men 
were exacting creatures, who rarely knew 


THE MAN WHO WINS 97 

what was best for them, and who kept about 
them a fund of discontent to feed upon. 

There was her poor father. He had 
given up now ; Doctor Thornton saw that 
his wife’s parents did not starve. Ell well 
was a melancholy skeleton to meet on the 
streets, bent, walking stiffly at all his joints, 
his fleshy cheeks fallen in as if after a severe 
fever. He was shabby, too, though the 
allowance was a liberal one. Fine morn- 
ings he would crawl down Tremont Street 
to one of the hotels, and lounge away some 
hours in the bar-room, on the chance of 
meeting an old acquaintance. Frequently 
the doctor would hear his husky cough in 
the hall outside his office door, but the 
old man slunk away sullenly whenever the 
door opened. Thornton suspected that on 
such occasions drains were made upon his 
wife’s allowance. Where else did it go to ? 
He was minded at times to mention this 
degrading beggary, but always refrained. 

7 


98 THE MAN WHO WINS 

He would have to build his wife’s character 
over from the foundations in order to make 
her appreciate his disgust, and he was not 
sure that he desired such an essential change 
in her, at least, now. She would confuse 
the issue : he would seem to be rebuking 
her pity and natural tenderness. So it 
mattered little if the old wreck wasted a 
few hundreds more on the pleasures he was 
capable of getting. 

The doctor’s wife had wavered between 
invalidism and delicate health for some 
years, and had settled into retirement until 
her daughter brought her out once more, 
first at Wolf Head, then in Beacon Street. 
The household, in spite of the fact that 
there were only three members, was known 
as an expensive establishment. But the 
doctor was supposed to be -well off, and his 
practice was good for more than he spent. 
If he worked hard all the winter, he was 
not idle in the vacation months; his fawn- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


99 


colored horse could be seen jogging about 
for miles up and down the coast. It was 
generally well into the evening before his 
dark face and burning cigar were seen on 
the path of the cottage. 

The summer when his daughter was 
seventeen, had been particularly busy. They 
had had a stream of guests as usual, staying 
for a week or a fortnight, and the busy 
doctor had not paid much attention whether 
Ruby Bradley with her young son had come 
or gone, or whether the second cousins had 
yet arrived. The house was generally full. 
He liked that, although he chose to dine 
alone, quite frequently. His daughter, 
whom he had watched shrewdly, demanded 
people, and the safer plan, he thought, was 
in multitudes. She was a restless young 
person, tall like him, with fair skin like 
her mother, dark hair, and nervous, active 
arms. 

“ She will always have some man on 


IOO 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


hand to exercise her egotism on,” the 
doctor reflected, impartially. So he fed 
her young men. The father and daughter 
went about a good deal together, and peo- 
ple made pleasant remarks over their inti- 
macy. This summer the doctor thought 
about her on his long drives, and scrutinized 
the young men who lounged about his ve- 
randa. Most of them were boys in the 
calf stage, college youths, who were spoil- 
ing with vacation. These the doctor called 
the puppies, and treated indulgently. There 
were others who came to the hotel for short 
fortnights, impecunious young business men 
or lawyers who were looking about for 
suitable assistance in life. Such candidates 
were submitted to a close scrutiny, but noth- 
ing to warrant active measures had yet oc- 
curred. 

He had made up his mind precisely about 
his future son-in-law. For two years he 
had studied his daughter, and nothing could 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


IOI 


shake his conviction that he had found the 
only safe conclusion to a difficult problem — 
a certain kind of husband. He must be 
rich, for Maud had inherited the Ellvvell 
dependence upon luxury. And he must be 
able to devote himself pretty steadily to her 
whims, subordinate himself good-naturedly, 
and obtain for her whatever she might fancy 
for the time. 

“ She will want to express herself bad- 
ly,” was the doctor’s comment. “ If they 
should try to express themselves both at 
the same time, there would be explosions 
— rows and divorce and scandal — unhappy 
children.” Once he said to his wife, for- 
lornly, “She is too clever, poor child. She 
has been talking to me like a marchioness 
of forty for the last half hour. If this keeps 
on I shall have to domesticate her great 
aunts in order to have some children about 
the house.” 

The desirable husband must be able to . 


102 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


place her well socially, for she had already 
shown herself keen in making distinctions. 
It gave her father a wicked pleasure to see 
her snub young Roper Bradley when he 
came with his mother to make their annual 
summer visit. She never mentioned her 
uncle Roper, and she extended compassion 
to the doctor on the subject of her grand- 
father Ellwell. 

The doctor was fond of her in spite of his 
analysis. He thought with pride that she 
was thoroughbred, capable of masterly 
.strokes. Yet, alas ! the opportunities for 
masterly strokes would come so rarely ; 
meanwhile she was a dangerous, febrile, 
nervous, chemical compound — something 
to be isolated. With her five-day enthu- 
siasms, her quick wit, her restlessness, her 
sense of dress, she would be fascinating. 

“If she will only fascinate the right 
sort!” the doctor prayed. He smiled 
savagely at the picture he drew of the right 


THE MAN WHO WINS 103 

sort, which, it is needless to add, was not a 
congenial type. 

“An acquiescent fool for a son-in-law, a 
kind of gentlemanly valet ! ” And, “ That, 
I trust, will be the end. Maud as a mother 
would be atrocious.” 

His daughter gave the doctor a certain 
kind of scientific interest. She harked 
back, so to speak, to former generations, per- 
verting their simple instincts. Her devo- 
tion to the Salvation Army for one win- 
ter, he pointed out to his wife, was a re- 
crudescence of the old Puritan pastor in his 
revivalist days. This manifestation would 
not be permanent, for there were so many 
other desires crowding each other in her 
brain. Just now she had developed a long- 
ing for art. The doctor had been obliged 
to exert himself to prevent her sudden de- 
parture for Paris, where she pictured herself 
living on two francs a day at the top of a 
very dirty flight of stairs. 


104 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


4 ‘ Perhaps she will elope,” the doctor 
said to his wife, humorously. “ But she won’t 
elope with a mere man : she will go off with 
an idea and then come around to the front 
door to be taken back.” 

“1 don’t think she is very considerate,” 
Mrs. Thornton hinted. Maud treated her 
at times with toleration. The doctor un- 
derstood what that meant — her lack of sym- 
pathy with her mother’s clinging to her 
family; deluging the Thornton house with 
Ell wells and their affairs. 

“ If she would only cultivate some seri- 
ous interests, yours, and take the place of a 
son,” thus Mrs. Thornton referred to her 
husband’s youth and its sacrifices. 

“I haven’t any use for women doc- 
tors,” Thornton replied; “and Maud 
as a nurse scrubbing floors would be more 
absurd than Maud in an Army Rescue 
Post.” 

For the art fever, however, the doctor felt 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


I0 5 

to some extent responsible. He h£d allowed 
young Addington Long a certain right of 
way in the house. Long was the son of an 
old friend, a Camberton man, who had 
wrecked himself early in his career. Doctor 
Thornton had taken the boy out of his 
squalid home, sent him to a boarding- 
school, and then, as he promised well, paid 
his way at Camberton. The young fellow 
had not done anything remarkable, merely 
grown into a nice gentlemanly manhood, 
with a taste for illustrating, by which he 
picked up a few dollars for spending-money, 
and placed himself pleasantly in Camberton 
circles. When he graduated, Dr. Thornton 
fell in with his suggestions that he should 
like to try his fortunes as an artist. So 
Long had spent several years in a studio at 
Paris, and had done solid work. The doc- 
tor had felt encouraged with his experiment 
and treated him liberally. 

This was only one of a number of similar 


io6 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


experiments in young life that the doctor 
carried on silently. Earlier in life than 
most men, he had had the yearning to see 
others go where fate had forbidden him. A 
number of young doctors, studying in Ber- 
lin or Vienna, and some young scientists 
scattered over the country owed their free- 
dom to his liberality. He selected his 
material here and there, without much ap- 
parent discrimination, but one test ex- 
isted, known only to the doctor, a test 
that was strangely sentimental, and yet 
shrewd. 

Long’s interests had been outside his 
field, but the tenderness he had felt for the 
father caused him to make this exception. 
He had not made a mistake, however. Long 
had exhibited at Berlin and Munich, and 
had begun to sell his work a little. He 
was already spoken of by the international 
press as a promising young American artist. 
This summer he was at home, sketching in 


THE MAN WHO WINS 107 

a village not far away, and the end of the 
day found him quite frequently at the doc- 
tor’s dinner-table. 

The doctor liked him. He had bought 
Long’s first picture in the Salon and had 
procured him patrons. He took him off on 
his yacht whenever he had a chance, and the 
more he saw of the young man the more he 
was ready to bet on his future. “ There is so 
much that is clean afnd wholesome in him,” 
he observed to his wife. “ He has managed 
to live over there without catching their 
cheap bohemianism.” Mrs. Thornton felt at 
liberty to encourage Addington Long’s inti- 
macy at the house. But he would not do for 
a son-in-law ; there would be two tragedies 
instead of one. So when Mrs. Thornton 
suggested that he should be asked for a visit 
during September, the doctor put the ques- 
tion off with irrelevant excuses; they had 
had too many people; September was his 
time for a rest ; young Long should be get- 


io8 THE MAN WHO WINS 

ting down to hard work, not loafing in a 
comfortable cottage. 

One evening toward the middle of the 
summer the doctor came home later than 
usual, and, wearied with his day’s driving, 
he got out of his carriage and let himself 
into his grounds by the shore path. The 
evening wind was puffing casually across 
the bay ; in the cottage above the lamps 
were being lit. The doctor walked slowly, 
thoughtfully, picking his way in and out of 
the shrubbery, thinking vaguely of the day’s 
work, the cases visited, the cases to be vis- 
ited on the morrow, the routine he had es- 
tablished. As his eyes rested on the cot- 
tage nestled in its little domain that com- 
manded several miles of the shore-line, he 
reflected complacently on his business sense 
which had led him to develop Wolf Head. 
He had managed, so far, skilfully, and this 
matter of a daughter that would come to a 
crisis during the next five years should be 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


109 

handled successfully. No one could be 
said to have the confidence of the doctor ; 
one would not look to him for confidences 
of any sort. Did he ever betray any doubts 
as to the desirability of his career? In- 
deed, he never put the question to himself. 
Fate had caught him in a vice; he had 
spent eighteen active years in padding that 
vice. Yet he mused as a man will at the 
close of a busy day, wondering what com- 
pelling power drives him over the wonted 
round. 

Suddenly he heard voices on his lawn, 
and instinctively stepped from the gravel 
path to the grass. There was a long mur- 
mur of a low voice; he wondered at his 
own intensity in listening. Something 
in the timbre of the voice, some sup- 
pressed emotional quality, struck his ex- 
perienced ear. When the sound ceased he 
advanced carefully along the hedge until 
he came to an opening that gave a view 


no 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


to the lawn. The voice was his daugh- 
ter’s, as he ha‘d guessed ; beside her was 
stretched a man’s figure in flannels, proba- 
bly Long’s. It was simple enough : tired 
after their tennis they had flung them- 
selves down where the hedge sheltered them 
from the evening breeze and were talking. 
But their attitude arrested him ; he felt an 
undue strain in the air. Presently Long 
spoke with a low, slow utterance, as if or- 
dering his words. His face was turned 
away from the doctor, looking up steadily 
at the girl. 

“Yes,” he said, and the doctor felt he 
ought to walk on, “it’s hard on a man. 
You see so many fellows who have failed 
who are just as good as you are ” 

“No, no; not just as good,” the girl 
interrupted, “there is soniething different.” 

“ Well, as far as you can see they are 
just as good ; they have worked terribly 
hard. Then you shut your teeth and go in 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


ill 


again, working desperately from the first 
light to the last peep until you are plugged 
out.” 

“ Then? ” his companion said, eagerly. 

“ Perhaps you crawl out to Lavenue’s 
and sit there in the evening watching the 
people sip and talk, the girls sauntering 
home, or the students who are gassing for- 
ever. It doesn’t seem to make any differ- 
ence what you do then, whether you go on 
a loaf for a month and fool with those who 
play, or go home to bed and back to work 
in the morning. You think the idea will 
come some day whenever it gets ready, and 
that there is precious little use in slaving 
away on a one franc fifty dejeuner. ’ ’ 

“ Don’t you think of home, America, 
and us who are anxious for you ? ’ ’ 

“ It seems so far away ; and do you care 
unless I make a strike ? ’ * 

The girl was silent ; her face was turned 
away while she played with his answer. 


I 12 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


“ You know we do,” shielding herself 
with a neutral plural. 

“ There’s the other side,” the young 
man’s voice sounded out more buoyantly. 

“ You go around to some friends’ studio 
and see what they are up to, and get ideas 
and go home with more spirit; or some- 
thing good comes along, a picture is ac- 
cepted, an order comes in. You think you 
have got there all right and it’s only the 
question of a little patience. There’s a 
good dinner or a little trip in the country — 
it’s fine around Paris you know. Then I 
think of coming home with some kind of a 
rep., and how all of you will be glad — you 
at any rate, Miss Thornton ? ’ ’ 

The doctor sighed and crept away. 

“The condition for the fever,” he mut- 
tered. 


X 

When he had entered his study he sat 
down to think. His man announced a 
patient, but the doctor made no reply. 
Suddenly he glanced up at the waiting 
servant. 

“Will you tell Mr. Long as he leaves 
that I wish to speak to him.” 

Then he went on thinking. Soon there 
was a knock, and Long came into his study. 
The doctor motioned to the chair he had 
just left, and, reaching for a box of cigars, 
took one and lit it. Long watched him 
expectantly. 

“ Shall you stay on here much longer?” 
the doctor asked at last, in his usual com- 
posed manner. 

8 113 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


114 

“ Oh, I don’t much know. I want to 
get back to Paris in the winter if ” 

“Don’t bother about that,” the doctor 
interrupted him, hastily. “ You can trust 
me to find the amount, you know, until you 
are squarely on your feet ; only,” his voice 
grew sharper, “ you won’t do much here. 
You should go at once.” 

The young man stared. 

“ Sail next week,” the doctor continued, 
blandly, but fixing his eyes steadily on 
Long’s face. 

“ I don’t know that I can accept ” 

The older man waved his hand hastily. 

'‘You can from me. I have been your 
father for a good many years.” 

There was a pause. Then Long blushed 
slowly. “I don’t know that I can,” he 
said at length. “ Why are you so anxious 
to get rid of me?” It was the doctor’s 
turn for silence. 

“If you don’t go now, you will not be 


THE MAN WHO WINS 115 

likely to go for a long time.” His eyes 
kept firmly on the young man’s face. 

“ And if I have a reason to stay here ? ” 

“ There can be no reason stronger than 
your success. ’ ’ 

“ But there is — at least,” he paused, awk- 
wardly — “ I feel there is, I hope there is.” 

<l Do you know why I have backed you 
so persistently ? ” 

“ You have been awfully kind ! ” 

“ It was not altogether on your father’s 
account,” the doctor interrupted him. “ I 
might have put you in some business and 
left you to fight your own way. That kind 
of experience we all know makes men, the 
successful men, who are tried and found 
capable of bearing strains. I have saved 
you so far from that struggle. Why ? 

“ Because,” continued the doctor author^ 
itatively, “ there are some men who care 
more to do some one thing, who love one 
object, more than they care for success, for 




IT 6 THE MAN WHO WINS 

fame, for pleasure. If they are defeated, if 
they never have the chance to do that one 
thing — perhaps the world is no poorer — 
there are plenty to take their places, but 
they are capable of misery, real misery, 
such as no common failure ever brings to 
the common man. They may be foolish ; 
they may be idle and be drawn aside and 
think they are happier in doing what comes 
along, but that is never true. They are 
wretched. Such men can never love, ex- 
cept as an interlude. Do you understand 
me?” 

The doctor paused at this sharp interro- 
gation ; Long’s eyes had followed him won- 
deringly during his long monologue. 

“ So you thought ” he stammered. 

“ That you were made in that way,” 
nodded the doctor; “an undomesticated 
animal.” 

Long sat brooding over this idea. The 
doctor went on in his low, swift tones. 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


117 

“ You have the hunger and the thirst for 
that work over there. You would play 
with a woman and then put her out of your 
heart into the street, or try to tame your- 
self. Which would be worse.” 

“And if I am not so sure that I am 
built like that? Suppose I am willing to 
make the sacrifice, if you call it that? ” 

The doctor’s tone became neutral again. 

“You refer to a possible interest in my 
daughter. ’ ’ 

Long’s face slowly flushed under the word 
“possible.” 

“Yes! at least, perhaps — I have never 
put it to myself exactly — indeed why do 
you ask ? ’ ’ 

“May I ask how far that interest has 
gone ? ’ ’ 

The younger man half rose from his chair. 

“If it had gone at all,” he said, hotly, 
“ you would have known it.” 

“ Yes,” the doctor knitted his eyebrows, 


1 18 THE MAN WHO WINS 

“ that’s all right. Don’t feel disturbed. 
If I didn’t consider you to be a gentleman 
in a more intensive sense of the word than 
is usual, I shouldn’t be talking to you like 
this. Have a cigar.” There was another 
long pause. The doctor debated quickly 
with himself what course to take. When 
he resumed, he used his rough weapon. 

“ You ought to know that my daughter 
will have very little in case of my death.” 
— This time the young man rose entirely 
from his seat. The doctor smiled and 
waved him back. “ And nothing until my 
death, which won’t come while you are a 
young man. The world reports me well to 
do, and I am, but I am taxed by society 
heavily. I mean I have large demands 
on my income, and aside from certain prop- 
erties that must be left in trust for other 
people and a modest provision for my wife 
and child, there isn’t likely to be much. I 
tell you all this, partly because I like you, 


THE MAN WHO WINS 119 

and partly because I think it is only fair. I 
don’t think you are after money. But you 
must realize now that money will make a 
great difference in your career.” 

When Long moved hastily, the doctor 
smiled. 

“I don’t say that you should hunt 
a fortune, but you should keep out of 
the way of attractive women without fort- 
une.” 

This time he gave Long an opportunity to 
vent his feelings. When he had finished, he 
began again quietly. 

“ What you say is singularly like what I 
said myself about nineteen years ago. I 
think I will tell you the story, ’ ’ and he pro- 
ceeded coldly to give him an outline of his 
life. Long listened respectfully. At the 
close he said, “ But the cases are not simi- 
lar, exactly.” 

“No two human cases ever are, but the 
theme is the same. You might arrange a 


120 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


different compromise; it would be a com- 
promise. ’ * 

“ Your difficulties were enormous ! Why 
need I plan for such misfortunes ? ” 

“ You mean the outside affairs, the money ? 
That might be arranged of course. There 
would remain my daughter, a subject which 
I can discuss with precision. She is in fair 
health, and while I live to look after her she 
will probably continue so. Her nerves are 
morbid, her egotism is excessive, her rest- 
lessness is abnormal. She is rather a brill- 
iant girl, I think, and to me a very dear 
one. But her career needs to be guided, or 
some decided smash will come. * 9 

“ You have no confidence in me?” 

“ The greatest. It is not her welfare only 
which I am considering, but yours. Besides, 
if she were normal or dull, not an exacting 
young American, yet she would be a wom- 
an. And as such her interests must be op- 
posed to yours forever. Should you marry 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


I 2 I 


her, I would be forced to agree with her 
and oppose you wherever you stepped be- 
yond conventionality.” 

Suddenly Long turned on his tormentor 
with a bold question. 

“Your marriage you would not con- 
sider a failure, even under worse condi- 
tions?” 

The doctor winced at this thrust, which 
he considered legitimate. 

He had had his moments of doubt even in 
the thick of his loyalty to his wife and child 
when this question had tormented him. 
Miasmatic moments that come to firm men 
also, and make them dizzy with the thought 
of the mere waywardness of life. Had he 
been any better or wiser than Roper Ell- 
well ? When the test of a vital passion had 
come he had acted like any other inconsider- 
ate, purposeless young man, like any one 
; with a chaotic will-less past ! 

But this temptation he had mastered, as 


122 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


he had mastered almost all the elements of 
his fate. 

“That kind of a question can never be 
answered fairly. No one has the complete 
data. No ! I can honestly say no. Yet it 
has altered my life profoundly, that I can 
say.” 

“ Then why are you so pessimistic for 
me?” 

t 

“Because,” the doctor replied, slowly, 
“such a marriage as mine has been, such 
a marriage as yours would be, is a career in 
itself. Beyond that nothing — understand, 
nothing. 9 9 

“ Love is a great career ! ” 

“It is; but there is hardly a man I 
have ever known who could embrace it, 
and that only, for a lifetime. You could 
not, I think, and you would be miserable. 
It is a humble career though it is rich. 
The man who wins does not devote his 
life to an exacting passion for a neu- 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


123 

rotic woman. You are the man to win : 
go in.” 

The doctor rose. 

“ Now I must leave you to see a patient 
who has been waiting. Think — you don’t 
love her, poor child ; what do you know 
of love ? You are putting your mind in 
order for love, and it will come quickly 
enough. ’ * 

Long stared irresponsibly at the floor. 
“I am glad we have been able to talk this 
over without passion. You have not obliged 
me to use any coarse authority, or any in- 
fluence except your own sane judgment. We 
have been unsentimental men. You have 
confessed to nothing more than a liking for 
a pretty girl. You have committed your- 
self to nothing.” 

The doctor paused, resting his hands 
firmly on the table between them. He read 
the young man’s face eagerly, and he felt 
sure that he had gained his point. 


124 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


“ Now, go,” he continued kindly, “ and 
God-speed to you ! Go in to win ! ” 

He turned. Long rose mechanically as 
if ordered by a superior, opened the door, 
and disappeared into the dark hall. The 
doctor listened for the sound of his footsteps. 
When he heard the tread on the ground be- 
neath the office window, he sighed and 
stepped out into the hall. His daughter 
was standing in the doorway at the farther 
end, as if looking for some one. 

“ Where is Mr. Long, papa? ” 

“ He has gone.” 

The doctor’s voice dwelt slightly on the 
last word. The girl glanced at him sharply, 
and then turned back into the lighted draw- 
ing-room. 

“ Dinner is waiting, Jarvis,” Mrs. Thorn- 
ton spoke from a lounge within the room. 
“ Why didn’t you keep Mr. Long? ” 

The doctor walked over to his wife and 
stood for a moment by her side. She 


THE MAN WHO WINS 


125 


smiled in further interrogation; the doctor 
bent and kissed her. 

“ Long didn’t care to stay,” he replied. 
Then he went back to his patient. 



































































































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